'Black Hole Sheep' - my animation for Motion Graphics. It didn't win the D&AD award.
With the tutor generally deciding this year's briefs for D&AD were rather crap, another source of competition briefs were shown via the YCN Student Awards. This had a more appealing range of briefs, ranging from Cartoon Network to Monster Munch (the latter of which is surprisingly enough to be targeted at 18-25s, for nostalgia and student munchies I guess?)
The one that struck a chord with me was HMV's brief in which participants had to design something to promote their supposedly easy to use website. As I thought about what I could include, I thought...ADVENTURE!
With the tutor generally deciding this year's briefs for D&AD were rather crap, another source of competition briefs were shown via the YCN Student Awards. This had a more appealing range of briefs, ranging from Cartoon Network to Monster Munch (the latter of which is surprisingly enough to be targeted at 18-25s, for nostalgia and student munchies I guess?)
The one that struck a chord with me was HMV's brief in which participants had to design something to promote their supposedly easy to use website. As I thought about what I could include, I thought...ADVENTURE!
Before you ask, yes, I am completely bonkers.
The main pitch I had stuck in my head, which would be about 60 seconds in length, or two 30 second TV spots, was to have a brave warrior, the most clichéd money can buy, go on an epic quest, fighting all sorts of horrific demons and monsters from legend, fiction and my spur-of-the-moment attaching of adjectives, all to get that one thing who truly desires.
A Scrubs Season 7 Boxset (or whatever's the commercially hip product of the time of release).
That's when we kick in the narrator, who tells us that the alternative is to use HMV's website to get the latest DVDs, music and games delivered straight to your door instead, to which our hero responds with a daytime friendly alternative to 'FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU-!!!'
Some concepts for the idea, featuring Mr Burly (we'll just call him that for now.)
A Scrubs Season 7 Boxset (or whatever's the commercially hip product of the time of release).
That's when we kick in the narrator, who tells us that the alternative is to use HMV's website to get the latest DVDs, music and games delivered straight to your door instead, to which our hero responds with a daytime friendly alternative to 'FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU-!!!'
Some concepts for the idea, featuring Mr Burly (we'll just call him that for now.)
I pretty much just started the concept artwork for this project right in the middle of everyone else presenting their idea pitches, but the general idea was to have this rather OTT viking type dude with bulging muscles, tight leather trouses, and an ultra sexy beard. The influences speak for themselves, but since we apparently have to go about 'explaining' this stuff, they include Eddie Riggs from Brutal Legend, the Scotsman from Samurai Jack, Prometheus from Disney's Hercules, Gimli from Lord of the Rings, and more or less any large bearded person from a DC cartoon. Will look into over influences, as well as experiment with more designs, later on.
A fun aspect will be trying to come up with various threats that stand between our hero and his Zach Braff fix. It'd have 'parody' written all over it. Legends talk of a fierce dragon, I drew a fifty armed dragon. Those sirens Homer went against in Homer's Odysee? Let's remodel them into manufactured pop-sirens. The fearsome Black Knight of...y'know screw it, let's just throw in a Dragonball reference. And a giant killer octopus not good enough for ya? Three words.
Oh dear god, YES
A fun aspect will be trying to come up with various threats that stand between our hero and his Zach Braff fix. It'd have 'parody' written all over it. Legends talk of a fierce dragon, I drew a fifty armed dragon. Those sirens Homer went against in Homer's Odysee? Let's remodel them into manufactured pop-sirens. The fearsome Black Knight of...y'know screw it, let's just throw in a Dragonball reference. And a giant killer octopus not good enough for ya? Three words.
RADIOACTIVE.
NINJA.
OCTOPUS.
NINJA.
OCTOPUS.
Oh dear god, YES
Having pitched this idea as a back up for my clockkeeper idea, my tutor was quick to notice that I was a lot more enthusiastic about this kind of idea than the other one, to which the other students unanimously agreed. HMV ad it is then. And since I technically work in advertising (I do the occassional promotional tidbit as part of the Weebl's Stuff team), it'll be great experience. Naturally, there is that whole comfort zone thing to generally worry about, but I plan on going beyond the general use of flash, most likely implimenting the use of After Effects and Photoshop as well. I also recently downloaded some music creation software called FL Studio, so if I can figure the workings of that out, I might even be able to supply my own epic soundtrack instead of mooching off the various royalty free sources.
The flipside is that due to the competition's earlier deadline, I need to get the main beef of the animation completed by mid-March (the main module's deadline is in May), but it shouldn't be too much of an issue, as this is the kind of thing I'm good at, and I have a bit more motivation going for me. I know my general hope for this degree was to develop my skills into epic festival-short making proportions, but if I can apply the stuff I've learned into a kickass advert, that's bound to be a good push in the good ol career direction.
The flipside is that due to the competition's earlier deadline, I need to get the main beef of the animation completed by mid-March (the main module's deadline is in May), but it shouldn't be too much of an issue, as this is the kind of thing I'm good at, and I have a bit more motivation going for me. I know my general hope for this degree was to develop my skills into epic festival-short making proportions, but if I can apply the stuff I've learned into a kickass advert, that's bound to be a good push in the good ol career direction.
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